1875 - Sports

Sports

Canadians play their first organized indoor ice hockey match March 3 at Montreal's Victoria Skating Rink (see 1843; Stanley Cup, 1893).

The Kentucky Derby has its first running at Louisville's new Churchill Downs (a small chestnut colt named Aristides wins the 1½-mile stakes race). Local promoter M. Lewis Clark returned from a trip to England a few years ago with plans to establish a series of races that will be comparable to the Derby Stakes at Epsom Downs, the Oaks, and other English racing classics. Held on the first Saturday of each May, the stakes race for 3-year-olds will be shortened to 1¼ miles and join with the 1 3/16-mile Preakness Stakes inaugurated in 1873 and the 1½-mile Belmont Stakes begun in 1867 to make up the Triple Crown of U.S. horse racing.

St. Louis baseball player Charles Waite takes the field wearing a thin, flesh-colored glove much like those worn by gentlemen when holding the reins of their buggy horses (see catcher's mitt, 1869). Some other players consider Waite's glove effeminate, and spectators jeer, but by the end of this decade more and more players will be adding pads to old winter mittens and creating leather "mitts" to protect them from hard-hit balls (see overhand pitching, 1884).

The first roller skating rink opens August 2 in Belgravia, London (see Plimpton, 1863).

Shropshire-born physician's son Captain Matthew Webb, 27, sets out to be the first to swim the English Channel; he makes his first attempt August 12 and goes well over half way before turning back out of consideration for his companions who are in danger of having their small boat swamped by rough seas; he tries again August 24 and crosses from Dover to Calais August 24 in 22 hours. News of his feat electrifies the country (see Ederle, 1926).

The first Harvard-Yale football game is held November 12 at New Haven under "concessionary rules" that permit running with the ball and tackling (see 1874). Final score: Harvard 4 touchdowns and 4 goals, Yale 0 (see Walter Camp, 1889).

Golfer Thomas "Old Tom" Morris dies at St. Andrews, Scotland, December 25 at age 54, having won the British Open four times (1861, 1862, 1864, and 1867). His son Thomas Jr. ("Young Tom") now 25, has also won it four times (in 1868, 1869, 1870, and 1872; there was no tournament in 1871).